Velcro is a fastening system made of two strips of fabric that stick together when pressed and pull apart with a distinctive ripping sound. One strip is covered with thousands of tiny hooks, and the other strip has thousands of tiny loops. When you press them together, the hooks catch in the loops and hold tight.

A Swiss engineer named George de Mestral invented Velcro in the 1940s after noticing how burrs from plants stuck to his dog's fur during walks. He examined the burrs under a microscope and saw they were covered in tiny hooks that grabbed onto loops in the fur. It took him years to figure out how to manufacture something similar, but his invention revolutionized fasteners.

Velcro appears everywhere in modern life: on shoes instead of laces, inside blood pressure cuffs, on children's toys, securing cables, and even on astronauts' spacesuits. NASA uses Velcro extensively because it works in zero gravity, where buttons and zippers can be difficult to manage.

Though many people use “velcro” for any hook-and-loop fastener, Velcro is technically a brand name, like Kleenex or Band-Aid. But unlike those products, you can actually velcro something shut, turning the brand name into a verb.